Broadening our understanding of the mechanisms of desiccation tolerance in plant tissues has been the overarching theme of Professor Jill Farrant’s work, with the aim of applying her research to the production of drought tolerant crops and pasture grasses.
She completed her studies to PhD level at the University of Natal (now the University of KwaZulu-Natal), majoring in biology, with expertise in biochemistry, physiology and the molecular and cell biology of seeds. After working as a research fellow at the university, she did a period of post doctoral research fellowship at the United States department of agriculture’s National Seed Storage Laboratory in Colorado, USA. She then took up the position of lecturer in the department of botany at the University of Cape Town and rapidly got promoted through the ranks to professor in the department of molecular and cellular biology at UCT. She served a term as head of that department, until she was awarded a Research Chair in Molecular Physiology of Plant Desiccation Tolerance at UCT.
Farrant’s research aims are to biotechnologically improve drought tolerance in crop species of relevance to food security in Africa. She has supervised 30 MSc and 16 PhD students to completion, and currently has four MSc and 12 PhD students registered.
She has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles in journals such as the Current Opinions in Plant Biology, Plant Cell, Planta, International Journal of Phytomedicine, and the African Journal of Biotechnology, and authored or co-authored 13 book chapters. In addition, Farrant has also edited journals such as Plant Growth Regulation, Frontiers in Plant Biotechnology, and the South African Journal of Botany and has participated in peer and grant reviews for numerous national and international grant agencies. She has sat on the jury of international award-granting committees such as the Agropolis Foundation; World Academy of Sciences and the L’Oreal-UNESCO Sub-Saharan African Women in Science Fellowship program, where she serves as president of the jury.
Farrant has garnered considerable recognition over her career. Among others she won the Department of Science and Technology Distinguished Woman in Science Award and has been named as the 2015 EPFL-WISH Foundation Erma Hamburger Laureate, for being a role model to biologists world wide. She was also awarded fellowships from the Royal Society of South Africa, the Harry Oppenheimer Memorial Trust, UCT and the World Academy of Sciences.